The Great Retail Unwinding
One of the things I do to maximize my step count each day is to park as far away from retail locations as possible.
Today, I'd had a walk, but parked in a Meijer (essentially, Target but with more groceries) parking lot so I'd have to walk a half a mile to Jimmy John's for a sandwich.
On the way, I passed an Arby's (huge parking lot--almost empty) and a Fazoli's (fast Italian--huge parking lot, almost empty).
There are thousands and thousands of fast food parking lots that size across the country. Burger King's parking lots, in particular, are so large it's comical.
No one goes to fast food places to eat inside anymore.
A few do (particularly at McDonald's and Chic-fil-A), but mostly, everyone uses the drive-through. The current fast food hotness in terms of franchise design is economical indoor footprints (Jimmy John's, Tropical Smoothie, etc.). How do these older companies unwind the ownership of thousands of restaurant locations with huge square footage? It can't be cheap to own them, but who would want them?
In a Sim City sense, all this land has been zoned commercial, but now there's far too much commercial zoning. Yet, you can't use the dying commercial spaces for housing. Unless, I guess, you get someone to build high-density housing (multi-story apartments).
It could take decades or longer to handle this. It's an urban mess.
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